


Blind Eyes

by alpacasandravens



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Mild Gore, Suicide Attempt, This is not a fix-it, post-mag154
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-20
Updated: 2019-09-20
Packaged: 2020-10-24 12:00:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20705651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alpacasandravens/pseuds/alpacasandravens
Summary: Jon tries to sever his ties with the Eye, even if it kills him. But the Eye isn't willing to let go so easily.





	Blind Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Like I said in the tags, this is NOT a happy fic. Jon is not in a good place for any of this (for that matter neither is Martin) and he's making rash decisions. I'm sorry. No character death though.   
This is what I needed to write after that episode emotionally destroyed me. Maybe one day I'll write fluff.

It’s just a normal day. Every day is a normal day now, now that attacks by indescribable creatures that he isn’t even safe from in his own mind have become normal. They’ve faded into the background, right along with the dull routine of researching, scheduling, and dealing with Peter. Martin kind of hates that.

He isn’t sure what day it is, exactly. They all sort of blend together. He thinks it might be a Tuesday - that’s what he thinks the weather report had said this morning, anyway. Unless that had been yesterday.

When Martin feels something poking at his mind, his first instinct is to hide. To wrap himself in the fog of the Lonely until whatever agent of the Beholding is trying to pry into him can’t find him anymore. 

But something about this feels different. It isn’t Elias; he remembers what Elias ripping into his mind had felt like. Against his better judgement, he’s almost curious. He must not have rid himself of the Eye as thoroughly as he’d thought.

He let go of the fog, just a little, and almost immediately he felt so many emotions he wanted to cry. They weren’t _his_ emotions though, he knew that. As pervasive as the guilt and sadness and longing infiltrating every corner of his mind were, and as often as he’d felt them himself, he knew they weren’t his. 

When Elias had forced the truth into his mind, it had felt awful. Awful was an understatement - it was the worst thing he’d felt in his life, and he’d been through a lot. And this - in a way it was awful too, because it was just so much. He knew his own memories, but suddenly he was seeing them from another perspective. Seeing himself as a new archival assistant, still so desperate for approval and so hopeful no one would see him slip up. Had he really been so young then? He felt the weight of Jon’s disgust (and it had to be Jon, didn’t it, who else could be doing this to him?) and he knew how trivial Jon thought him. But it was ok. He’d always known that.

He saw himself stumble into Jon’s office, out of his mind and terrified that the worms would come back for him. He remembered that terror, but Jon didn’t feel it. Instead, he felt some of that disgust melting away and being replaced with a grudging protectiveness. And he saw himself again and again, growing more haggard with the years at the Archives. (It hadn’t been that long really, but none of them wore their stress well.) Each time, some more of that disdain was gone, replaced by a strange fondness and eventually an expectation. He saw Jon peering irritably out of his office door once when Martin hadn’t brought him tea, and suddenly he knew that Jon hadn’t missed the tea - he’d missed _him_.

And he saw a girl he vaguely recognized with a cat in her lap, and he heard her tell Jon to talk to someone at work, to reach out, and he knew the first name that popped into Jon’s head was his own. He felt those strange feelings of fondness grow stronger and more complicated until it was almost painful, and he knew when Jon decided to hide them away in his mind. 

He saw the inside of a hospital room he’d come to know far too well on his own, only this time, Basira and that girl were there, and Jon was awake. And he knew with crushing certainty how upset Jon had been that Martin hadn’t been there. With increasing rapidity, he saw flashes of himself, half visible wrapped in fog, and he knew how Jon felt.

Jon was telling him, too. Martin caught his head in his hands and listened as Jon’s desperation and longing echoed in his head, as Jon missed him so intensely it felt white-hot, a sharpness of emotion he hadn’t been able to feel in a long time. And he heard as Jon spoke in his mind. _I love you, Martin. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry_.

Martin jumped up from his desk and he ran. The tears on his face hadn’t dried, and he was in such a hurry he forgot to hide himself in the Lonely. It had been a week - two? three? - since he’d spoken with Jon. Just enough time to have nearly forgotten, to have almost reconstructed his isolation. Long enough that he’d almost forgotten what Jon had asked him, had almost begged him to do. Long enough that he had assumed Jon wouldn’t do it.

“Sorry,” Martin mumbled as he rammed into an unfortunate member of the library staff as they came out of the bathroom. He didn’t stop running. 

Rosie called out to him as he ran past, but he didn’t hear. He took the stairs down to the Archives two at a time, but as he opened the door at the bottom of the stairwell, he knew it was too late. His mind was his own again.

“Jon?” He called, voice loud in the absolute quiet of the Archives. “Jon!?”

“In here.” Jon’s voice was so quiet Martin could have missed it if he wasn’t paying attention. He sounded sad. Almost defeated.

Martin crept down the hallway toward Jon’s office. The door was cracked, and the light was on. All his carefully cultivated instincts to stay away were coming back, but he ignored them. He’d spent so long worrying about Jon, he couldn’t leave him now. Not when he’d done what Martin suspected he’d done.

Jon’s door creaked as Martin pushed it open. Jon sat behind his desk, back hunched and hair a ragged mess. He’d looked worse every time Martin had seen him, cheeks hollowing, eye bags darkening, and skin seeming to shrink around his bones. But there had always been one thing that remained the same. There had always been a curiosity behind Jon’s eyes.

Now, those eyes were messy holes in Jon’s face. Blood pooled and ran down his cheeks, dripping from his chin. His eyes were mutilated, torn to shreds. Clumps of their tissue sat on Jon’s desk, staining the cheap wood. His glasses were neatly folded next to the torn out remnants of his eyes, thin frames somehow still spotless. In his hands, Jon held a pen. Its point was covered in blood.

“I’m sorry,” Jon said. He sounded so hollow. Like there was nothing left of him at all. “I couldn’t wait for you.”

Martin’s voice shook. “Jon, what did you do?”

Jon chuckled softly. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“Why?”

“I was going to hurt someone either way. This way, it’s only me that gets hurt.”

“You’ll die.” 

Even if Jon had used a properly sterilized knife, gone about blinding himself safely and properly, Martin didn’t think he would survive. He’d given his life to the Eye in his coma, and it wouldn’t just let him quit. But using a cheap office pen ruined any chance Jon had. The wounds would get infected, and he’d die, and there would be nothing either of them could do about it. 

“I won’t,” Jon said, and he sounded almost...regretful? “I thought I would. That’s why I told you. But it won’t let me die.”

“You told me you could quit. You said we would leave, after everything.”

“There isn’t going to be an ‘after everything,’ Martin. Basira told me you aren’t planning to survive. And even if you did, the world is never going to stop being on the brink of destruction. If Extinction fails, it’ll be something else.” Jon was too understanding, Martin thought. He’d never sounded like this before. If he didn’t know better, he’d almost say he sounded kind.

“Basira wasn’t supposed to tell you.”

“Does it matter that she did?”

“Yes, it matters, Jon,” Martin practically spat. “Because you were supposed to wait for me, and you were supposed to keep yourself safe for me, and instead you - you did this!”

“I’m not going to die.” Jon picked up his glasses from his desk and slowly put them on. The silver frames slipped halfway down his nose from the blood. Jon didn’t adjust them. “I’m sorry, Martin. I really thought I’d found a way out.” 

Martin looked to Jon’s eyes. Slowly, somehow, the tissue was re-forming. The blood had stopped flowing and was starting to dry on his face as Jon’s eyes knit themselves back together, growing anew to replace the parts that still sat on the desk. 

Martin knew a lot about Jon’s eyes. He’d written several mediocre poems about them, back in the days when he still wrote. He’d described them countless ways, and spent far too much time daydreaming that Jon would look at him with something akin to appreciation. Martin saw Jon’s eyes on the desk, and he saw Jon’s new eyes in his face, and they were the same. He wanted to throw up.

Jon blinked. “I shouldn’t have told you,” he said, speaking more to himself than Martin. “I only did because I thought I was going to die, and I thought I shouldn’t die without telling you.”

“You told me -” Martin stopped. He couldn’t say it, because he still couldn’t believe that Jon thought he loved him. He knew it was the truth, but after so long of not expecting reciprocation - “Why was that your suicide note. Why did you put your suicide note _inside my head_ if you didn’t want me to save you?”

“I wanted to make sure you knew. I love you, Martin. But it doesn’t matter now. You deserve better than a monster.”

A tear rolled through the mess of Jon’s face, washing away the blood as it fell. It was the last thing Martin saw before he turned and walked out of Jon’s office.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed (or if you cried!) leave kudos/a comment below or come yell about tma with me @alpacasandravens on tumblr!


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